Excerpt from English Grammar, Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners: With an Appendix, Containing Rules and Observations for Assisting the More Advanced Students to Write With Perspicuity and Accuracy

ON the utility. And importance of the study of Grammar, and the principles of Composition, much might be advanced, for the encoua ragement of persons in early life to apply themselves to this branch bf learning; but as the limits of this Introduction will not allow of many observations on the subject, a few leading sentiments are all that can be admitted here with propriety. As words are the signs of our ideas, and the medium by which we perceive the sentiments of others, and communicate our own; and as signs exhibit the things which they are intended to represent, more or less accurately, ac cording as their real or established conformity to those things is more or less exact; it is evident, that in proportion to our knowledge of the nature and properties of words, of their relation to each other, and of their established connexion with the ideas to which they are applied, will be the certainty and ease, with which we transfuse our sentiments into the minds of one another; and that, without a com petent knowledge of this kind, we shall frequently be in hazard of miss understanding others, and of being misunderstood ourselves. It may indeed be justly asserted, that many of -the differences in opinion amongst men, with the disputes, contentions, and alienations of heart, which have too often proceeded from-such differences, have been occasioned by a want of proper skill in the connexion and meaning of words, and by a tenacious misapplication of language.

One of the best supports, which the recommendation of this study can receive, in small compass, may be derived from the following sentiments of an eminent and candid writer on language and com positition. All that regards the study of composition, merits the higher attention upon this account, that it is intimately connected with the improvement of our intellectual powers. For 1 must be allowed to say, that when we are employed, after a proper manner, in the study of composition, we are cultivating the understanding itself. The study of arranging and expressing our thoughts with propriety, teaches to think, as well as to speak, accurately.

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